My friend @nuclear333 asked me how I shaded hair and I promised her a hair shading tutorial, which of course became a hair…everything…tutorial.
Lots of great tutorials have already been been made on the subject so here’s me throwing in my own two cents. The usual disclaimers apply: this is how I think of hair when I draw it, and is by absolutely no means the only way, or even necessarily a correct way, to do it. I’m always happy to hear about how others approach the same subject!
Hi, Anon! I’ll definitely try my best. Horns are a little tricky since they’re so subjective and the styles/textures vary so drastically.
Mostly I’m going to be talking about texture here and I’ll try to keep it simple since they’re time consuming to draw.
Smooth horns are great and easy, can come in any and all shapes, but if you want to add more interest and character to the horns, it all comes down to how you texture them. Here’s a simple smooth horn. It’s okay, it’s basic, but it works and will especially work better once it’s colored if it has a sheen or a matte look.
You can add simple lines to it to give it a bit more interest, but you can take it farther than just the cylinder look like drawn here. The lines give it the easy, quick illusion of being more dimensional, but it’s not the most interesting or dynamic.
You can play with the lines however you like to give the horns more uniqueness, such as a line down the center to sort of pinch it inwards. Still more dynamic than the smooth horn, but more interesting than the rounded one.
You can leave the lines as they are for an easier horn, or take it a step farther and use them as guides to texture them. This is where it gets fun, but time consuming. Definitely look up references of what you want to go for if you’re not sure. I highly recommend Ram, Ibex or Antelope references, Antelope being my favorite. They have so much texture to them in the forum of smaller and larger ridges, so here’s a horn based loosely (artistic liberties taken) off a mix of Ram and Antelope.
Getting into plates which are my favorite, there’s little to reference off of. Here’s a more dynamic, spiky look with plates using the guide lines as a base to get an ideal direction you want the horn to shape into.
Just take your guide lines and then extend outward. Add as little or as much wear, tear and damage as you want. Horns can get dry and crack, they can take a hit and break, age can cause grooves, your imagination’s the limit.
Outside of plates, you can look up any horned animal to get ideas for texture, anything from steer to deer and elk (if you want to get more into the antlered look), or mix and match textures from a few horn styles you like. Hope this helps! Sorry I can’t go more in depth, but I tried to explain it as best as I know how. Good luck with your horns!
Hey jsyk it’s 2018 and if you’re still drawing characters with big lips like THIS, even if they’re pale/not black, it’s fucking racist. Stop doing it.
No excuses. “It’s a stylistic choice!” It’s a RACIST stylistic choice.
“Idk how else to draw big lips!” That’s because you relied on racist caricatures and are a bad artist. Teach yourself. Learn. If you’re not willing to do that, then you are a bad, racist artist.
“But it’s part of the character design!” Yeah, and it’s racist. If it’s your OC, then change it. If it’s not your OC, make the right choice and draw them with normal looking bigger lips instead of this racist monstrosity.
And if this post makes you uncomfortable because it’s calling you out for stuff you’ve done, good. Fix it. Own up to it. Grow.
If you see this and you’re first thought is to defend this: you are racist. You are part of the problem. Congrats. Now work on yourself and unlearn that.
(some troll gave me shit about only providing overly “feminine” examples. I would have been happy to ignore them…but there are so many great examples on how to draw perfectly acceptable (not racist) full-lipped male characters, in the end, I couldn’t resist.)
I created a quick walkthrough on my process! You can do the same with any digital art program and brushes you like. As always, learning comes with critical thinking and if you feel this does not apply to you, then no worries! There’s no correct way to do things as long as you achieve the results you want.
The technique can be customized with different brush types and colours, and can be as simple or heavily rendered as you so desire. I hope it helps a little! I like to do lighting like this in my own work for a sense of atmosphere.
Please ignore the fact I spelled complementary wrong, it’s been a long week ok lol
disclaimer: I am east asian. if anyone who is not white sees anything wrong with my phrasing, inaccuracies, or insensitivity, or something I missed, please feel free to add on. I'm just one person with one perspective; none of what I say should be taken as The Singular way to draw an Asian character. if you havent done so already, please take the effort to expand your view of Asian culture outside this one tutorial.
if a white person reblogs this and adds something stupid I'm going to bite and kick you like a wild animal
I’ve been asked a few times about how I use textures, especially gold textures, so I’ve decided to try and do a little tutorial about it. I’ve never really done a tutorial, but I hope it’s easy to understand, since it’s not difficult to apply :)
There are a hundred ways of doing the same thing, this is just one of those ways.
For other (BETTER) tutorials explaining more about textures and other ways to use them, I point you all towards the 3 tutorials that taught ME the basics!
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